Saturday, November 17, 2012

well?

Welp, turns out I'm the worlds worst blogger. A LOT has been going on in the last few months, and to be completely honest, I've felt so overwhelmed I was a little nervous to even try to tackle this post, so I've decided to break it up. Too much info to cover in one post!

First off, IVF is amazing. I have no other words to describe how blessed we were. I thank God everyday for giving us this opportunity.

So, should I pick up where I left off? Okay, I can do that.

The post below shows a calendar of how thebest case scenario for this round of IVF. They used a lot of words like "give or take" or "possible transfer". Basically, don't go exactly off this calendar because your body would have to react perfectly to everything. We're just giving you an outline so you have an idea of what to expect. Well, my body reacted perfectly. We retrieved the eggs on Sunday, July 15th. Easy peasy. I fell asleep and they did all the work. That day I was a little sore, but back to work the next day. Blessings. They were able to get 16 eggs which was fantastic! Chad and I were hoping for 10 so we were thrilled. They told us they'd call the next day to let us know how many made it to the next stage - most likely about half. When they called me on Monday, they told me 15 of the 16 had made it! WOOHOO! I couldn't believe it. The lab tech who called me said they'd watch the eggs for five days and go from there.

When we went in five days later for the transfer, two eggs had made it to the full-on implantation stage. Dr. Slater said it was up to us how many we chose to implant, but they'd continue to watch the other eggs so we'd know for sure how many we could freeze(for the record, two more made it to implantation stage - so we now have two little icicle babies). She told me I was a "candidate" for implanting just one egg, but we wanted to be sure we'd get pregnant so we decided to implant both fertilized eggs - just to be safe. The transfer was simple, about 10 minutes, and we were done. I had to lay low for the next two days (which was fine because the transfer was on a Friday, so I didn't have to take off any work - blessings, again), and I'd go back a week later for a blood draw.

The morning of my first blood draw, I took a pregnancy test, even though they told me not to
(it's possible to get a false positive from the HCG shot I had to
inject myself with before the retrieval, or a false negative if it's
taken too early). When I took the test, I was sure it would be negative. When I looked down two minutes
later, I saw a big fat positive - however I showed no emotion. I refused to get excited. I put
the test in the top drawer of my bathroom counter and told myself not to
think about it again. When I went in later that afternoon for my first blood draw, they told me they wouldn't be calling with the results, because they needed two blood samples on different days to be sure. That was frustrating! I just wanted to know! But I totally understood why. As I was checking out, I told the nurse I had taken a pregnancy test earlier that morning.

Her immediate response was,

"Oh honey, don't get too disappointed. It's still pretty early, and things could totally change. This is why we don't want people to take pregnancy tests! They see a negative and immediately jump to conclusions."

"Well, it was positive..", I replied.

"POSITIVE? Either you have a strong pregnancy test, or you're having twins...", she said.

My response? "It was just the Target brand...?"

She laughed and told me, excitedly, to just hold my horses and wait until the next blood draw.

At this point, I was getting somewhat excited - I mean, if a nurse was surprised by my positive pregnancy test, how could I not be? Two days later (the morning of my second blood draw) I decided to take one more, just for funsies. It was positive again. I tried not to get excited, but at this point, I was feeling pretty good. I felt optimistic we were pregnant, but again, didn't want to give myself false hope. I kept telling myself I'd know for sure in just a few hours.

I went in for my blood draw, went back to work and held my breath. I had my phone attached to my hip - I was NOT missing this call! Chad kept calling me to see if I knew (which was very frustrating because I'd feel my phone vibrate and immediately start freaking out, only to find out it's just Chad). For some reason, he seemed to think I would forget to call him after I heard the news. What a weirdo.

About three hours after the blood draw, I got the call that would change our lives forever.